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Home Video Wiki talk:Community Portal
Category:Community This is the general discussion page for the wiki! New founders should leave a nice welcome message and encourage new visitors and editors to leave a note to get the conversation started. ---- How this wiki should be structured A few quick ideas. This home video wiki should likely be organized based on title, not release. Since so many titles have so many releases, keeping them all organized on a single (potentially really long) page seems pragmatic, but this also presents the issue of categorization and external links. The bottom of a page should not have categories for VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-Ray and every region code the same way a wikipedia article describing an action figure line, tv series, and comic book all get categorized together. To do so would make those categories meaningless. So what to do? Someone with an extensive knowledge of wiki software could edit some code to somehow allow categories to link to sections, but that seems unlikely (Poor me, at this point I'm still trying to figure out how to change the wiki's name to read "Home Video" and not "Homevideo"). The best workaround is extensive use of categorized redirects, though this would keep those categories invisible in the article text and require an awkward use of manually maintained categorization edits in a line below each section like this: Region 1 | Warner Home Video DVDs Not a pretty solution, but its all I can think of for now. Also for external links I'd say home video specific ones would work great. Link to the wikipedia article, but whenever possible direct to the #Home Video, #DVD, #Blu-Ray, or whatever section, though on wikipedia these sections can be moving targets with all the constant editing. IMDb used to have DVD and LaserDisc sections, but those are now gone, though use of the most recent Internet Archive Wayback Machine link could fill that void. AllRovi has fairly extensive lists, and sites like bluray.com offer a lot. I'm a big fan of external wikis, so for genre specific titles, if there's some good coverage of the releases on a wiki, those links should be included as well. Though it might be best to not plug too many companies selling a title, Amazon.com is so extensive in their library of old titles and box art, it should also make the list. External links also need not be limited to the bottom of the page. In much the same way the categories should be forced at the bottom of each section, an external links subsection could provide links not duplicated elsewhere. Formats We all know about the primary home video formats: VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-Ray, but there are of course some of the lesser ones. BetaMax, VHS-C, D-VHS, DIVX, UMD, HD DVD, Video CD, and SVCD, though of course some of these were mainstream at the time of their manufacturing, and I believe Video CD's were quite common outside of the US. There are also various other formats I only know of from the wikipedia articles and am not certain if titles were made for all of them. The rule should be if there were ever commercial releases in the format, that specific release justifies an inclusion in the article. In some cases that might even mean video on DVD-ROM for PC's, and Game Boy Advance Video. And then there's an entire universe of VOD and web video services. Some titles have never had physical media but still would justify inclusion. Not a web series exclusive to YouTube, but movies and TV shows not on home video but available on iTunes, Amazon.com, Netflix, Hulu, or wherever. While I certainly wouldn't want this wiki to be a pirate's best friend, some notable failures to release to home video (The 1960's Batman and most seasons of Malcolm in the Middle) might justify a description of the existence of torrents.Klknoles (talk) 06:06, March 1, 2013 (UTC) Reviews and other content This is not and should not be a movie and TV show wiki. This wiki should have a specific focus on only the home video releases of titles, and the technical information about them and leave other wikis (wikipedia and genre specific ones) to handle the rest. That means nothing in the way of describing the film or show outside of maybe blurbs from the packaging should be included in the article, and while there may be considerable discussion and review of the film or show on media review sites linked from the article (I've always enjoyed reviews on "The Digital Bits", but those are by no means only technical analysis.), only reviews that include technical descriptions of the release should be linked. So does that mean this wiki should not have anything remotely resembling genre classifications? A "Comedy on Home Video" category would certainly be a mistake, but what about a template of, say, Batman titles on home video? Should an article about a film include a mention of the sequel and hence a link to that article? I'm really not sure. Having to tackle potential issues like those is a problem I'd love for this wiki to have. How much of a review of a title should this site have? This should mostly be a site that reports the facts as others have presented them, but some "reviewing" of a title might be appropriate, like acknowledging video quality even if the title is too obscure to have warranted reviews, or pointing out that a DVD or Blu-ray motion menus give away major plot twists, or commenting on how odd it is for a DVD to have trailers from several other films but not the film itself (weird but it sometimes happens). A description of video content quality, or even glitches and other notable facts seems acceptable without the same kind of reliable-references-for-every-little-detail criteria that we get on wikipedia.Klknoles (talk) 06:58, March 1, 2013 (UTC) Where to begin I've put some thought into where and how this wiki might begin. Perhaps the best way is to start adding titles from prominent lists of films, or at least lists of films on home video. Some that could be listed: Wikipedia:Academy Award for Best Picture A merger of Wikipedia:List of Criterion Collection Laserdisc releases and Wikipedia:List of Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray releases Work through these: Wikipedia:Lists of box office number-one films though this would require considerable merging and other editing. There are a number of categories that could have their equivalents here such as: Wikipedia:Category:Television videos and DVDs Wikipedia:Category:Lists of films by home video label Wikipedia:Category:Home video The best way to move lists over between wikis is to use export/import, thereby preserving the history of the content, though this has the side effect of generating lots of unwanted redlinks and crediting users who never technically contributed to that particular wiki. Another idea I've had for a shameless plug to popularize this wiki is to create pages dedicated to certain popular franchises, often with a detail and formatting that would not be considered acceptable on even the dedicated wikis. That could in time attract attention via Google searches, help popularize the content and draw in readers and editors.Klknoles (talk) 04:36, March 12, 2013 (UTC) First Import List of Criterion Collection releases is the first import, taken from the wikipedia list of laserdisc releases. The attempt to import the 9 meg file with the complete history didn't go so well, so I had to use the current version, copied and pasted the contents into the new article, and left a redirect. A bit patchy, but workable. From there, I'll have to purge the article of the non-title redlinks, and eventually get to work on including the DVD and Blu-ray titles as well as lots of other cleanup.Klknoles (talk) 07:59, March 12, 2013 (UTC)